If you know your Cat Quest, probably all I need tell you about Cat Quest 3 is that it’s more of the same, only this time with pirates. Which is to say, it’s a . But if you’ve not yet played developer TheGentlebros’ pun-obsessed series of super-casual, ultra-streamlined open-world action RPGs, I guess I have some explaining to do.
Cat Quest 3Developer: TheGentlebrosPublisher: Kepler InteractivePlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out 8th August on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, Switch, and PC (Steam).
The original Cat Quest released back in 2017 and was immediately heralded as a very good thing by people with exceptional and accurate taste. The pitch is pretty straightforward: what if an expansive open-world action-RPG but with all the faff taken out? You’ve got your adventuring, your exploration, your combat, your questing, your dungeon-crawling, your levelling, plus heaps of treasure and endless gear – only pared right back as far as is possible without the whole thing collapsing in on its own insubstantiality, then polished to a sheen.
Cat Quest 2 did the whole thing all over again in 2019 – this time with dogs and two-player co-op – and five years on from that, we’ve got a third outing that shakes up the familiar formula a little by covering half the map in water, handing you a boat, and then festooning everything with pirates. Strip away the tricornes, jaunty shanties, and other nautical flourishes, and Cat Quest 3 admittedly isn’t much of a departure for the series, but, honestly, who cares when it remains such a delight to play?
This time around, you’re cast as a young feline pirate who, with the aid of their disembodied ghost-cat friend, sets off on a quest around the sun-bleached, palm-strewn Purribean archipelago to locate the mysterious North Star Treasure – fending off other cat-based pirate crews along the way. It’s Cat Quest’s streamlined open-world action-RPG set-up reimagined as a classic pirate fantasy, full of hidden treasure, high seas adventure, and cutlass-clanking combat. And just like its predecessors, it’s a game that prioritises joyful immediacy over fussiness. Battles are over in seconds, and dungeons rarely take more than a few minutes to complete, making it perfect fodder for the perpetually time-strapped, and an excellent candidate if you’re looking for something uncomplicated but unpatronising to play with a young ‘un.